Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Michelle Chang
The roof is one of architecture’s primary constituent elements. Whether its origins stem from functional, moral, or political purposes in uncertain, but the design of roofs has historically engaged form with performance. In Laugier’s account of the primitive hut, the roof was created to shield humans from nature; Semper contends that it came about to protect the hearth; and Koolhaas suggests that, from the beginning, roofs were made to signify power.1 Though these origin stories leave out the complex relationships between cultural, economic, and technical contexts, their reductive clarity serves as a lens for judging architectural qualities of scale, shape, and proportion.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.2018.59
Volume Editors
Ángela García de Paredes, Iñaqui Carnicero & Julio Salcedo-Fernandez
ISBN
978-1-944214-18-0
